


& i'll find you in the jaws of the beast.

by BrokenHorizont



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Flashbacks, M/M, PTSD, deliberately cluttered writing to give a sense of dread, this is supposed to be uncomfortable to read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26012737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenHorizont/pseuds/BrokenHorizont
Summary: sometimes, he is back in the burning helios. it feels more real than anything else he does.
Relationships: Handsome Jack & Rhys (Borderlands), Handsome Jack/Rhys (Borderlands)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	& i'll find you in the jaws of the beast.

**Author's Note:**

> this is supposed to be uncomfortable to read. i used some deliberate choices that are supposed to make the reader disoriented, like long sentences with tons of ( bracket ) sentences and such. it's not supposed to be nice to read. i still hope it makes sense. it's not quite a written down anxiety attack, but i suppose i should give warnings for that and obvious ptsd anyway. 
> 
> it's also unbeta'ed, so there's a chance for some mistakes. i'm sorry if there are. 
> 
> jack/rhys is only mildly implied. take it if you will, or don't.

It hurts.

No, that’s not quite right. To say it hurts would put it more than lightly, would make it much more comprehensible than it actually is. It would take away from the way his lungs burn from the inside out with every step, both from exhaustion and the scalding heat that soars through the air, cuts like into suffocating clumps that pile up and choke him with every breath taken, seeps through the soles of his shoes (one heel is broken off and so is, he is almost certain of it, something around the area of his knee – maybe not broken, but certainly twisted, and it won’t ever heal right again if it’s not looked at, but he has – maybe – some more pressing issues in this very moment). 

The same heat that makes the air dance, flicker, tricks movement that isn’t there to his vision. (But what if it _is_? Just a faint flicker of blue, just - )

Heat that eats at his skin and tears at his clothes, even if maybe ( _maybe_ ) that is merely caused by the wreckage around him. It’s sharp edges and collapsing structures sure do their best impression of a gaping maw, trying to rip and tear at him and more than once it’s a stroke of luck that he doesn’t get trapped or crushed between it. They are eager to devour what they can of him, even if it’s just his clothes, or his hair, leave deep scratches and cuts in both metal and flesh limbs.

(It will take hours for Helios to die, and even then, some parts will need weeks to finally crash down for good, potentially crushing a scavenging bandit beneath, fulfilling _his_ will just one more time, one last time, until the very end).

Everything that used to be familiar (comforting, even, a home; even if it’s long gone by now, an eternity, lifetime ago - ) now builds a maze, makes for the jaws of the hungry beast that already swallowed so many of those falling with it yet, and still wants to claim everything and everyone it can within it’s final dying moments; especially the one that caused it’s misfortune, brought it to it’s bizarre not quite undead state. 

(It might be just electricity and metal, but it still always lived.)

Every step is torture, and every step drains to the equivalent of multiple just before it, drinking what’s left of his energy whole. By all means, he should not be standing up anymore.

So yes, it hurts. Every single step of the way.

_(The human mind is not made to remember pain, and it can’t reproduce it, no question for the better. Still, it often attempts to do it’s best impression of it, to recall every single detail it possibly could, and then add some of it’s own to give every reliving a personal twist. Just a little gift for the way. It does it’s best to remind him what happened in that night, and how he felt like dying, certain of it even, but too stubborn to accept fate just yet. It does it’s best to remind him of what he did._ **How could he, how could he, how could he -** ) 

Crashing through the ground had certainly warped dimensions and layouts. He wanders through rooms that used to be twice as big but have been compressed (and those are the ones he can even still enter), climbs up a hallway that landed in an odd angle and sways dangerously the entire time, finally crashes down just as he’s about to jump down – both to his horror and blessing for not having to jump down that would certainly tear more at what’s wrong with his knee, but nearly claiming part of his shoulder in the process. It does however knock the air out of his lungs for a moment, and he just sits on his hands and knees for a moment, in tremendous pain, with flames licking all around him and debris threatening to end his journey any second now, and he feels like _laughing._

_(Nervous laughter: the body’s way of pretending whatever horrible thing we are experiencing isn’t half as horrible as it really is. He read that, somewhere, he thinks. It’s the sort of laughter that comes from your throat, too far up to be comfortable, and stresses oneself even further. It coils up around his throat like a snake, restricting his breath. Like a snake, or fingers of a hand big enough to curl around in it’s entirety, like –_

**Stop that.** )

If his sense of orientation had been anything good to start with, it would be entirely screwed up by the labyrinth the space station builds, no doubt to trap him (and whoever else is here; there is no way everyone else landed either far away or died on impact), but he pushes further without direction, without a goal anyway. It’s pure determination at this point, a stubbornness to not die like this. He survived Pandora, he survived the gunfire at the old Atlas facility, and everything else, and he will not die by some stupid _wall_ forgetting it has to be upright to be considered a wall. 

But ah, of course – he should have known that it would not be so easy, and when the first screen cracks to life next to him (just distorted sounds and no image, that is, unless one wants to call colorful pixels on the broken surface an image resembling anything but a hallucinogenic drug) he jumps, and nearly curses. Nearly. He doesn’t simply because he doesn’t know what else might survive so far, even if not for long. He doesn’t know how far things carry, and much more simply, because he can’t. His throat is far too tight to produce even a single sound besides the heavy breaths that steal past his lips without his permission. 

It is a cosmic joke that comes to nobody’s surprise but his own. 

Still, he pushes on. He knows it’s there ( _he is_ ) and that it is inevitable. He knows he has to press on, that he has to face it.

_(And this is where his mind just absolutely, undoubtedly, fucks him up, just because it can. This is what he has to work through most, and it doesn’t let him. Because every time he knows he just has to round this last corner, every time he can just so hear Jack’s voice but not make out the words, every time he knows that it’s just seconds to face him again, to deal with what he regrets most, maybe change some words, maybe figure out a way to make everything less horrible – just maybe, maybe make him believe that he means it when he apologizes – everytime that is when he wakes, drenched in sweat. He’s cold and burning up at the same time, the cheap excuse of a blanket he uses in backroom of the Atlas lab he uses as a bedroom (and everything else that’s not work, which is. Not a lot) tossed off, and he can’t breathe, and everything hurts. He presses his hands against his eyes – the new cybernetic one never gives him any trouble unless it is in these moments, in which it hurts so bad he wants to tear that one out, too – and cries, at least tries to. Often there’s not enough left in him to do so. And then, when he feels like breathing is no longer the hardest thing he ever did, he glances at the clock, which tells him it’s 3:47 AM, and gets up to distract his mind with coffee and work. Those are the days where he doesn’t bother to shower or dress – there’s nobody to see him, and the time would just be used to circle his mind back, and back, around the same thing. The same question._

_And it helps to distract from the flicker of blue just out the corner of his eyes, too.)_

**Author's Note:**

> i wish i could do plot and not just write cluttered one shots. i'm more than happy for suggestions.
> 
> anyway hit me up on twitter @kezemu_


End file.
